BubbleStream

Jedah Mayberry

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

Synopsis

Trajan Hopkins is the prototypical adolescent male, protected on all sides by the soft cushion of family. He worships his brother, Langston, invariably from a crouched defensive position in an effort to fend off the latest sequence of moves his brother is working to perfect. Langston is widely regarded around town as Preston's most prolific fighter, steeped in martial arts, his ambition set on someday reaching the Olympic stage.
Trajan fits neatly inside his brother's shadow, the dutiful second seed. When his brother dies, it's like one leg of a chair goes missing, warping Trajan's sense of connection to anybody near to him. He ventures into the world alone, steps out on the call of the wind, the rise of the moon, the tide pulling against him. He returns at the end of the night to diminished ties, the weave of familiar cues strewn loose about him, waves crashing in, pushing him ever further from the shelter of home.

Author Biography

JEDAH MAYBERRY is an emerging fiction writer, born in New York, raised in southeastern CT, the backdrop for his fiction debut. The book won Grand Prize in Red City Review's 2015 Book Awards as well as honorable mention in Writer's Digest's Self-Published Book Awards. It was named 1st in Multi-Cultural Fiction for 2014 by the Texas Association of Authors. Jedah was a top ten finalist for the 2013 Best New Author Award sponsored by the National Black Book Festival. He garnered honorable mention in Glimmer Train's April 2012 Family Matters Short Story Contest for Ton Oncle, a version of which was published as part of the book. His work has appeared at Loose Leaf Press, Flashing for Kicks, EtherBooks, Linden Avenue, and Black Elephant. He is a regular contributor to The Prose App. He currently resides with his wife and teenage daughters in Austin, TX.

Author Insight

Sunshine and Rain

Book Excerpt

The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

Sunshine and Rain

“Ma,” Trajan asked through his mother’s closed bedroom door, taking the knob in his hand and hoping to be let in. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you fine, Trajan,” Dottie responded. “What is it you need?”

His mother had been sunshine and rain since the night his brother died. With any luck, today she would be sunshine. He thought he’d heard her showering that morning while the sky was still dark outside. He hoped that a stand-up shower might spell a departure from her lie around, tub-soaking ways.

“I came to remind you that today is your birthday.”

“I know today is my birthday. You think your mother has gone soft in the head?”

“Is there something special you want to do today?”

“No,” she replied. “Today is nothing special.”

“But, Ma, it’s your birthday. We need to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what, Trajan? Another year on this earth? I celebrate warm baths, clean sheets to lie in afterward. These things I do on a regular basis. Why wait one day a year to celebrate?”

“Ma, I’m being serious.”

“I’m being serious, too,” she assured him, groans from the mattress, suddenly put-upon as his mother shifted position in bed, grumbling through the shut door. “Tell you what,” she offered. “How about I give you my birthday on top of your own to do with as you please, seeing as how you have so much celebration in you. Wouldn’t that be special?”

Trajan let go of the knob, defeated.

“Happy birthday, Trajan,” his mother beamed from the other side of the locked bedroom door. “Be sure to have a slice of cake for me.”

He rested an open palm on one of the door’s raised panels, registered the empty feel of its hollow core. “Happy birthday, Ma,” he whispered into the door frame before turning up the hallway. “Here’s to another year.”